No Matter What
by figured-out
Summary: Whatever it takes.


**No Matter What.**  
_Sydney/Vaughn  
Post 3.17, The Frame._

One morning, she was 30 minutes late to debrief. He was kind of expecting to hear about escaping kidnap and kicking ass on the way, but there was none of it. She was all smiles, even through her apology - _I'm so sorry, I don't know what happened, I just slept through the alarm, I'm so sorry_ - and there was something about her, a certain _glow_, that made him really nervous. 

Another morning, she didn't show up to debrief at all. When Dixon started detailing the next mission, he stopped him to ask, "shouldn't we wait for Sydney?" and was surprised with Dixon's response of "Sydney won't be joining us today. You're going in with Jack". The next day, he saw her holding a cup of coffee and talking to her father. Her expression didn't seem to match an op conversation, and he wondered what else would the Bristow's have to talk about. 

He watched her closely - she rarely stayed late to work, often hid yawns with a tired hand, and one night, when they called in at 3am, she showed up wearing a Lakers sweatshirt two times her size. He was kind of tempted to ask her a basketball question before realizing it was none of his business. 

She took a two-hour lunch break once, and one night, around midnight at LAX, he offered her a ride home and she said she already had one. He waited until she was about 3 feet away and followed her, arriving just in time to see her entering a non-government car with someone, whose features were unrecognizable to him, at the wheel. 

He approached Jack at one point, to search for an explanation, but Jack told him to ask Sydney before he even voiced his question. 

He contemplated asking Sydney for an entire afternoon, and apparently, stared at her without noticing the whole time. She walked up to him, waved a hand in front of his face and wondered if there was something wrong. He blinked, opened his mouth to talk, but ended up shaking his head no and turning away from her. 

That night, lying in bad next to his wife, he silently cursed Senator Reed for killing himself. 

- 

His name was Ryan and one day, when he stopped by Sydney's place to hand her some papers, they both stood there, waiting for her to open the door, looking at each other awkwardly. She introduced Ryan as her boyfriend and him as Michael from work, and even though for a long time he had wanted her to call him Michael - it seemed much more personal than _Vaughn_ - he hated hearing it from her because it sounded so _cold_. 

The next day they stood in the late flirting corner and he asked her if she was happy. She said yes, so he asked if she was in love. She said yes, so he asked what it meant and if she thought Ryan was the one. She said she didn't know, couldn't be sure, because one upon a time she thought Danny was the one, and she was obviously wrong, so perhaps she was wrong the second time as well. 

He was going to tell her that she wasn't, she wasn't wrong, she was so right and it'll forever be that way, but Weiss popped out of nowhere and said Lauren was looking for him. 

He walked away, but not without looking at Sydney one last time. Her smirk was going to stay on his mind for a long time. 

- 

The Covenant gave up using Sydney when it was a year after she had escaped from them and they still didn't have her in their _possession_ again. 

They wanted her dead, but she was trained for those situations. She managed to save herself, but couldn't do the same for Ryan, who was with her and tried to protect her. He didn't know that Sydney Bristow didn't need anyone to protect her. 

Vaughn wasn't the first one to get there - her house - but was the first she let sit next to her and pry her fingers off of Ryan's. 

He put his arm around her, and she cried for yet another lost love. 

- 

She wasn't the first one there when he found out Lauren was nothing but a traitor, and not even the last one. She didn't show up at all and he knew her well enough to know that she thought showing up would send one message - _she's dead and nothing's keeping us apart anymore_. 

He didn't know her well enough to guess if she was really thinking something like that. 

- 

He killed Lauren on his own - three bullets to her chest and two to the head. Then he had to bury her, because she was still his wife and he couldn't just leave her there. 

It was a one man's funeral, and nobody spoke of how beautiful, amazing and generous she was. He didn't say a word, just put down one single rose. 

A week later, he was at the cemetery again, only this time he had no excuse. He just wanted to sit there and stare - it said Lauren Reed, not Vaughn, because that was what he had requested - and be angry. Anger felt good to him, and it wasn't like he could be something else. 

When he looked down at his watch, he saw that he was an hour and a half late to work, but still he didn't get up. Only when he heard footsteps and noticed someone was standing behind him, he stood up and turned around, expecting… well, no one, because nobody would have guessed he was there. 

Sydney guessed. And she really there, standing next to him, looking at the same thumb stone he was looking at. Then she looked at him. "Do you miss her?" 

"No." 

"Did you love her?" 

He had to think for a second. "I though I did." 

- 

It took him a couple of days to be able to look her in the eye, and more than a couple of weeks to carry a normal, non-work related conversation. 

She told him about Ryan, and he spoke about Lauren. It felt good to talk about her, to analyze and try to realize what drawn him to her. it was Sydney who eventually pointed out that Lauren was the complete opposite of her - blonde, perfect, no problems, childhood traumas or not-so-dead relatives, not so caught up in the espionage world and not in life danger almost weekly, and it was Vaughn who pointed out that that was exactly why he fell truly, wholeheartedly in love with only one of them. 

They went out to dinner the next evening, and nobody mentioned dead exes or devils who threaten world's safety. It was all about them, and they used the time to reminisce, to look back on their past and share a few smiles. 

He joked about what would have happened if he had kissed her earlier than he eventually had - maybe after she got him that promotion, after finding out who her mother really was, or after that Taipei op went really wrong, and she joked about what would have happened if they didn't have that tension building for almost two years. He wondered what she meant. She chuckled and reminded him that maybe a week went by between their first kiss and first time sleeping together. Then she chuckled some more at his shocked expression. 

They decided to take it slow, but slow really meant to just throw the awkwardness out the window and do what they did best - love. 

They agreed together to not pretend that there were never others - Lauren's, Ryan's - but to not hold a grudge for that. 

And they agreed together to let it flow, to do what feels and seems right, and to never give it up… and to make it work no matter what. 


End file.
